French Rabbit Merlot, Lamb Shanks with Herbs de Provence

French Rabbit Merlot Vin de Pays D’oc, France; $8.92, Harris Teeter; in a “Tetre-Prisma” container. (The wine is French, the company is American.) (I did not pick this wine. Someone, who will remain nameless, and who is suseptable to “cute, fluffy bunnies”, choose this wine.)

Well, the dinner was excellent. However, our bottle, er, paper package, of wine was already way too open, well, sour and bland when we first tasted. It did not get better. It got worse. It was as if the wine had actually been open for a couple days, and we were getting the dregs. Some red wines generally will benefit from some aging, even cheap ones. This wine wouldn’t. The color was ok, but there was some sentiment to watch out for.

Brigette picked lamb shanks for our dinner, which she first browned in olive oil, garlic, and seasoning. She then cooked it on the stove top in a covered pan with herbs de Provence, butter, garlic, and a bit of the wine. The shanks came out tender and lamb tasty.

Our vegetables were sliced turnips, white onion, a cubanelle pepper, garlic salt and pepper drizzled with olive oil, and roasted.

The sourness of the wine did not help the dinner. Both the vegetables and the lamb were very good, and went well together, but the wine seemed to try to divide it up.

We did finish the, er, “Tetre-Prisma” container full. It was not over the edge of “drinkable”. We have opened wines that we didn’t drink after the first taste, so we have our limits. Maybe you could say that in the pursuit of knowledge, we wanted to know what would happen with this wine during the course of the meal. It wasn’t pretty, or tasty. The person “who shall remain nameless” also got a pinot noir in a “Tetre-Prisma” from French Rabbit. We will “drink” it next week.